In the negotiations on the debt ceiling, Vice President Biden initially pushed for a $2.4 trillion deal — with $2 trillion in spending cuts and $400 billion in revenue raisers. Although President Obama recently suggested a larger deal with higher tax rates for the wealthy, Republicans have uniformly rejected that idea.
Retirement Challenges for Financial Advisors [Registered Rep]
The retirement landscape is changing dramatically for financial advisers. As they prepare to help clients navigate this environment, advisers will need to wrestle with a variety of issues. Among them: what’s the right default option for defined contribution plan participants? What type of investment products and strategies are most appropriate as clients move from the wealth accumulation to the distribution phase of their financial plan? And what role will Social Security play in a client’s retirement income?
Social Security Reform Is the Key to the Debt Ceiling Debate [Huffington Post]
To finance the U.S. government until after the 2012 elections, Congress must raise the U.S. debt ceiling by roughly $2.4 trillion. Many members of Congress will not support such an increase in the debt ceiling without a similar decrease in long-term federal spending.
Look to Chile, Asia for defined contribution innovation [P&I]
Believers in American exceptionalism can find much to applaud in the U.S. approach to funding retirement income. It’s a system that rewards self-reliance, encourages thrift and hard work, leaves lots of room for personal choice — and that has no parallel in the rest of the world. But, in our view, it doesn’t do enough to help Americans achieve financial security in retirement, so we should adopt best practices from other countries.
It’s Time for Social Security Reform [CNBC]
The time is ripe for Social Security reform. Last month AARP—a historic foe of such reform—announced its openness to modest benefit reductions in order to restore the program to solvency. This week President Obama offered major reforms to Social Security as part of a far-reaching debt reduction deal.
Fine time to wade into money-market funds [Washington Post]
Money-market mutual funds are widely used, poorly understood – and suddenly much in the news.
After decades of quietly providing millions of investors with relatively safe places to put their cash, money-market funds are getting a lot of attention in Washington. After one prominent money-market fund – the Reserve Primary Fund – lost money in the 2008 credit crisis, federal regulators have studied the risks these funds pose to their shareholders as well as the whole financial system. They have also looked at how the funds might be affected by the debt crisis in the euro zone, because some money-market funds have exposure to European banks.
A Plan to Tax the Foreign Income of US Companies [Bloomberg]
The current system for taxing foreign source income of U.S. corporations makes no sense. In theory, income earned by controlled foreign subsidiaries of American companies is taxed at the U.S. corporate rate of 35 percent; in practice, the Treasury receives no taxes on that income as long as it is held overseas.
Don’t hobble money market funds [FT]
Money market funds are under regulatory attack. Their critics are calling for radical change in how these funds operate, proposing that money market funds either be prohibited from maintaining a constant $1 share price or required to maintain a substantial cushion against potential losses.